Re: True Tales of Incredible Stupidity

For a minute there I thought you were going to talk about my High School years :tongue:

Originally Posted by AvengerRam

Have you ever encountered an act of stupidity that was so sublime that you could hardly believe it really happened? Here's one I encountered recently:

I received a phone message from the assistant to an attorney to whom I had just faxed a document. She said "The document you faxed came out too light to read. I think you should check your toner."

Apparently, this brilliant person believes that the toner in my fax machine is squirted through the wires, at high speed and through great distances, into her fax machine, in order to print the document.

Re: True Tales of Incredible Stupidity

In the words of Inigo Montoya, "I do not think that word means what you think it means."

Inconceivable!

The ultimate journal of the stupid has to be darwinawards.com. Let me see if I can find something good...

Hot Pants

2004 Honorable Mention
Confirmed True by Darwin

(30 July 2004, Georgia) A Walker County man’s pants exploded in Lafayette while he was filling out forms for social services workers in front of his home.
Daniel Gabriel Doyle was hard at work in his laboratory when uninvited guests knocked on the front door. Because his work was rather secret, he poured two of the chemicals, red phosphorus and iodine, into an empty film cannister and stuffed it in his pocket before going out to greet his visitors. Two social workers wanted him to fill out some forms, so Daniel, 39, walked with them out to their car, where he sat down in the back seat and began writing.

“He kept fiddling with his front right pants pocket,” said Patrick Stanfield, commander of the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit Drug Task Force, according to the Walker County Messenger. The film cannister was probably feeling a little warm by this point as the red phosphorus and iodine mixed together in a chemical stew, but Daniel was happy to know that he outfoxed the social workers and avoided discovery of his secret project. The two chemicals are key ingredients in the making of methamphetamine. What he apparently did not know was that the now-boiling mixture of red phosphorus and iodine would soon reach 278 degrees Fahrenheit.

"All of a sudden, a loud bang happened, and fire shot from his pocket. It damaged the inside of the state vehicle and burned clothing on the case workers." Daniel suffered second- and third-degree burns to his testicles and leg. He was rushed to Erlanger Medical Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, before being hauled off to jail. Sheriff’s deputies raided the house and discovered his meth lab. He and a female friend were charged with manufacture and possession of illegal drugs.

"That was one for the books," Walker County sheriff's Maj. Hill Morrison told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "I've been in this business for more than 35 years, and that's a first."

Ski Theft Backfires

1998 Darwin Award Nominee
Confirmed by Darwin

(February 1998) Matthew and his friends were sliding down a Mammoth Mountain ski run on a foam pad at 3am, when he crashed into a lift tower and died. His makeshift sledge of yellow foam had been stolen from the legs of a lift tower on Stump Alley. The cushion is meant to protect skiers who hit the tower, and the tower Matthew ran into was the one from which he had created his sledge. There's a moral in there somewhere.

What's That Sound?

2002 Darwin Award Nominee
Confirmed by Darwin

(2 August 2002, Kansas) Police said an Olathe man was struck and killed by a train after his vehicle broke down on Interstate 35. His attempts at repairing his car had failed, and he had stepped away from the busy freeway to call for help, when the train engineer spotted him standing on the tracks. The engineer said the man was holding a cell phone to one ear, and cupping his hand to the other ear to block the noise of the train.

Re: True Tales of Incredible Stupidity

Re: True Tales of Incredible Stupidity

Daniel suffered second- and third-degree burns to his testicles

A drug dealer gets arrested AND torches his sack....that's a win-win if I ever heard one.

"Before the gates of excellence the high gods have placed sweat; long is the road thereto and rough and steep at first; but when the heights are reached, then there is ease, though grievously hard in the winning." --- Hesiod

Re: True Tales of Incredible Stupidity

1994 Urban Legend At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, AAFS, President Dr. Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here is the story:

On March 23,1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. Mr. Opus had jumped from the top of a ten story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to that effect, indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window which killed him instantly.

Neither the shooter nor the descender was aware that a safety net had been installed just below at the eighth floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.

"Ordinarily," Dr. Mills continued, "a person who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide."

That Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death, but probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands. The room on the ninth floor, whence the shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously and he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window, striking Mr. Opus.

When one intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted with the murder charge the old man and his wife were both adamant. They both said they thought the shotgun was unloaded. Thed old man said it was his long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her. Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident; that is, the gun had been accidentally loaded.

The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

Now comes the exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window. The son had actually murdered himself so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

Re: True Tales of Incredible Stupidity

This Darwin Award Winner from 1993 is one of my faves. It got me to see what they were all about in the first place.....

(25 March 1993)
A terrible diet and room with no ventilation are being blamed for the death of a man killed by his own gas. There were no marks found on his body, but an autopsy revealed the presence of large amounts of methane dissolved in his blood.

His diet had consisted primarily of beans and cabbage, just the right combination of foods to produce a severe gas attack. It appears that the man died in his sleep from breathing the poisonous cloud that was hanging over his bed.

Had his windows been open, the flatulence wouldn't have been fatal, but the man was shut up in a nearly airtight bedroom. He was an obese man with an unlimited capacity for creating the deadly gas. Three rescuers became sick and one was hospitalized.